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John Abdulai Jinapor, the Ranking Member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, has attributed the current power outages in parts of the country to financial challenges rather than faulty transformers. He criticized the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for allegedly disseminating false information by claiming to be repairing transformers when the real issue lies in generation deficits.
Addressing Parliament on Tuesday, March 12, Mr. Jinapor explained, “A deficit in generation means that the generation capacity is not able to meet the demand, and because of that, there has to be what they call load shedding, popularly known as ‘dumsor’. This has been consistent, going on for about two months.”
Mr. Jinapor asserted that ECG is reluctant to acknowledge the truth about the generation challenge, which is primarily due to the government’s failure to support ECG in procuring fuel.
John Abdulai Jinapor emphasized that Ghana is facing ‘dumsor’ due to insufficient fuel to power the thermal plants. He highlighted that on March 11, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was only able to generate 3000 megawatts instead of the required 3,543 megawatts, indicating a shortfall of 500 megawatts.
“This information comes directly from the systems control room. We have individuals who are honest and patriotic, and they will provide us with accurate information,” Mr. Jinapor stated.
He further disclosed that Ghana has decreased its power exports to Cote d’Ivoire, CEB (Togo), and Sonabel (Burkina Faso), a move that will have adverse effects on the country’s foreign exchange reserves.
“We are even losing that market. That’s a market that gives us foreign exchange, so if this happens and ECG was shedding 450 megawatts, this has nothing to do with obsolete transformers,” Mr. Jinapor emphasized.
Transformers do not get overloaded overnight, it builds up. So what is ECG’s maintenance culture? What is their investment culture? That even tells you that they are not doing the right thing.”
“Because you can’t have the whole of Ghana suddenly all our transformers getting overloaded overnight. It’s never the case. It takes time. It builds up and as it builds up, you put in more transformers, you upgrade the transformers so that you can hold the system,” he said
Mr Jinapor has debunked ECG’s claim that maintenance works are being carried out at night.
According to him, ECG’s assertion is false, as the company typically conducts routine maintenance during the afternoon, not at night.
“It’s a management issue, political interference and misuse of the revenues accruing. It’s not as if revenues are not accruing. As you can see, almost a billion collection a month can do a lot but when you misapply over 500 million, certainly there will be a huge debt.
“I think they should get back to the cash waterfall mechanism, allow PURC to function so that the losses will be reduced to the barest minimum,” he said.
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